The media, although circumscribed, do bring environmental disasters to the public’s attention but, as Richard Spencer, our China Correspondent, reports today from Xiditou, there is no redress for their victims. Local officials who do not have to seek electoral approval are in cahoots with local businessmen whose only concern is profits; the courts, under the sway of the Communist Party, refuse to handle such cases. In this chronically corrupt system, the main sufferers are the rural areas, the “cancer villages” of our story, on to which toxic waste is dumped.